D&D 5E Thinking on Horror

[Lanliss]

I don't know if I will ever do a horror game, but I have some thoughts on how I might.

First, fear is caused by weakness, so how to convey that in 5E? I am thinking one of the best ways would be to lower health. Maybe only let the players gain health every other level?

As others have mentioned in other threads, once something has stats, it can be killed. What if I just give my monsters combat stats, but no health? Make it abundantly obvious when the players are fighting that their attacks are doing nothing of course, so it is not a "gotcha" when the monster just keeps on going.

Lastly, darkness is a real fear. Would it break the game if I removed darkvision, and all darkvision giving abilities?

 

[amerigoV]

Here is stuff I collected when I decided to run horror as a campaign. You might find something to get you on your way.

http://lab.obsidianportal.com/wikis/horror

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't know if I will ever do a horror game, but I have some thoughts on how I might.

First, fear is caused by weakness, so how to convey that in 5E? I am thinking one of the best ways would be to lower health. Maybe only let the players gain health every other level?

Fear can be caused by a lot of things. Pinning fear on weakness assumes that eventually, one will become strong enough to have no fear whatsoever. Fear is more like time. It's always there. It's always following you. It's always biting at the back of your mind and the back of your heels. It wears you down slowly (hence the sanity score) and may be easy to stand up to in the short term, but is difficult to hold back in the long run. "Stronger" people may "live longer" so to speak but they still die in the end.

As others have mentioned in other threads, once something has stats, it can be killed. What if I just give my monsters combat stats, but no health? Make it abundantly obvious when the players are fighting that their attacks are doing nothing of course, so it is not a "gotcha" when the monster just keeps on going.

You don't swing a sword at fear. If you want your players to be truly afraid of it, don't let them fight it at all. Looking at eldritch horrors drives people insane, even the greatest of minds break attempting to comprehend them. Fighting them? Not even on their radar. Let players fight their minions, the warped living, the raised undead, beasts under their command.

In my Ravenloft campaign there was very little fighting. Lots of howls and screeches in the middle of the night, clattering window shutters, scraping tree branches and also very few successful long rests. You'd fight a pack of wolves here or there, risk catching lycanthropy here or there, but you didn't fight the truly scary things, you just woke up and saw their effects. Villagers massacred in the night and claw marks on everything. A bite mark on the neck of your friend when you awake one morning.

Lastly, darkness is a real fear. Would it break the game if I removed darkvision, and all darkvision giving abilities?

Not really no. But like in the Ravenloft setting I mention above, true sunlight is obscured by magic, when darkness falls, it's technically magical darkness, wherein darkvision doesn't work anyway. So I "removed" it but I'd suggest giving a good reason.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Fear, loathing, dread & horror come from roots of psychology- things beyond your control or ability to cope with. Give the players the unexpected and they'll get stressed.

In Temors and The Ghost & The Darkness, it came from being hunted by predators the humans couldn't perceive until it was (usually) too late. This can be archived in game via changing darkvision rules, but also by finding foes with attacks, defenses, or movement capabilities the party can't deal with.

In M:tG, people hated playing my poison counter deck, not because it was good, fast or efficient (because it wasn't), but because it was such a rare game mechanic, nobody prepped against it. Once it got the upper hand, it usually won. After a certain point, there were no ways to extend the game against it.

In 3.5Ed, I changed energy drain rules from taking levels to inducing conditions: Fatigued => Exhausted => Staggered => Unconscious. Easier math for all involved but scarier results.

I also got experienced gamers to become slightly panicky and make bad decisions simply by playing Kodo's theme to The Hunted...while their PCs were being hunted. I could actually hear the stress in their voices and see it in their body language.
[video]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CntHnSx0L4Q[/video]

 

[marcelvdpol]

Fear can be caused by a lot of things; in the case of horror there are still some options available: weakness against the super natural (you are not strong enough to beat them), corruption of your moral compas (ie you become that which you hate most), loosing your sanity (Lovecraft was a master at this), having nothing but bad choises (being forced to choose between two evils).

Usually more than one source is employed; curse of strahd has several sources in it.

Note that fear doesn't automatically translate to horror; fear of being killed by goblins wouldn't really count as horror in my book.

 

[gyor]

Chronicles of Darkness (formerily known as New World of Darkness 2e) is much better suited to horror, its designed for horror.

That being said, adding alot of volunerible peasants and innocents to protect is good way to go. Even if the PCs are tough they can't protect everyone and they have to be worried about friendly fire.

All of a sudden you hear a scream so the PCs rush to the area, only to find out it was a decoy, they hear a series of skrieks, turning to see a Devourer eating a young woman who screams and cries as the Devourer traps her in its rib cage.

The PCs race to save her, but find a group of zombies in the way, near a group of crying childern, do they fight the zombies and save the kids or leave the woman to her doom?

As they make their decision, they hear the cackles of a Gnoll Warband in the distance, approaching at a rapid rate.

 

[Guest 6801718]

I've been thinking about horror and D&D lately too. I did a zombie apocalypse game, drawing a lot of inspiration from The Walking Dead. Worked in some old school D&D with things like Atropos, the undead afterbirth of the universe and lots of other things. It had some mixed success.

The difficult thing about blending horror with D&D is that they are two dissonant styles. In D&D, you become ever more powerful. Sometimes to the point of performing miracles. In horror, the heroes have to be vulnerable. Often in horror, fighting the monster or whatever directly will only get you killed. In D&D, you're entire character is built around being effective at combat. Class features and treasure are largely combat based. So how to you blend the two styles without betraying one or the other?

When horror is done well, it leaves a lot to the imagination. Thinking about what "could be" will always mess with you a lot more than actually seeing it. Peoples' minds will do the work for you. So make sure to really capture the feel of horror with great descriptions of disturbing things, some occasional sound effects worked into the adventure and some good music. I really freaked the party out by just knocking on the table during one of their discussions. Slow, rhythmic knocking that they didn't quite notice at first and then began to wonder just what was going on. Keep whatever is coming after them away for a long while and show what it does with their surroundings. Having the party come across a room full of bloody handprints or drag marks that suddenly end in the forest goes a long way in building tension.

Now, if you want some interesting mechanics to back up your horror, the DMG has some fun alternate rules. Horror should be hard on the PCs and dealing with it should cost them. Try throwing in things like Sanity, Injury or longer rest times as presented in the DMG. Sanity is fun for alien Lovecraft style horrors. They roll sanity saves when they encounter an otherworldly horror for the first time. Then you can roll on those fun Madness tables and give them some afflictions. The injury rules are good for more visceral or slasher kind of monsters. Crits can cause some permanent damage with losing a limb, eye or other infirmity. When they encounter a werewolf that can literally rip them limb from limb, it will be scary. Now that they are all beaten up and battered, that short rest is now over night and a long rest could require a week. So resources management is a big deal, including managing class features. That kind of resource management is good for survival horror. Plus going toe to toe with that big monster may be a bad idea if it tears you apart and you need a month to recover. Meanwhile, during that month it's still out there hunting you. Rules like this turn D&D on it's head a little. Suddenly trying to be the combat monster of your own may not be the best solution. Getting involved will cost the PCs something, which really is the root of horror. What does it cost you? Does it cost your soul? Your sanity? Your health and longevity? Do you run the risk of spreading the horror (like vampirism or lycanthropy)?

So if you can find a way to blend two very different styles, you can make it work. D&D is about gaining things while horror is about losing them. One of the things I did in my zombie game was have the PC come up with their own NPCs tied to their backstory. The adventurers weren't orphaned murderhobos out for glory. They had family and friends. They came from a small town where they knew everyone. Putting people they created in danger added to the tension. Saving some random merchant from some goblins isn't horror. Finding your mother with a festering bite mark on her arm and murder in her eyes is horror.

 

[marcelvdpol]

Therebare somentricks to increase the horror element in dnd:
1) use monsters that can infect, disease or drainbthe target doing semi-permanent damage.
2) make cure spells such as remove curse and major restoration use very limited resources.
3) give the party lots of weak peasants, commoners etc to protect against evil forces.
4) protected safe areas are few and far between and even those are lead by dubious characters that are either in league with evil or have become corrupted by it.
5) atmosphere, atmosphere and even more atmosphere. Don't show, only imply and let the players imagination do the work.

 

[MechaPilot]

I don't know if I will ever do a horror game, but I have some thoughts on how I might.

First, fear is caused by weakness, so how to convey that in 5E? I am thinking one of the best ways would be to lower health. Maybe only let the players gain health every other level?

As others have mentioned in other threads, once something has stats, it can be killed. What if I just give my monsters combat stats, but no health? Make it abundantly obvious when the players are fighting that their attacks are doing nothing of course, so it is not a "gotcha" when the monster just keeps on going.

Lastly, darkness is a real fear. Would it break the game if I removed darkvision, and all darkvision giving abilities?

Here is a good discussion about creating fear and horror that was carried over when the WotC forums went down.

Regarding your question about darkness and darkvision. Generally, it is not darkness that is feared. Instead, it is the unknown that could be lurking in the darkness. Darkness often gets the blame for this fear, but it is the fact that something could be there, beyond our awareness, waiting, watching, and with evil intent, that makes the obscuring nature of darkness frightening/terrifying.

I don't think that removing darkvision would break the game. Darkvision, by its nature is situationally beneficial.

 

[Gwarok]

First off I would like to say that this is a great topic, and touches on a larger topic and issue that all DM's have when trying to make a real roleplaying experience which is "How do I get my bloodthirsty murder hobos to have their characters RP actual human responses to threats instead of just rolling dice to crack open the XP pinata and see if any useful magic item's fall out?" I ran into a similar issue when trying to introduce devils into my campaign instead of demons because I wanted to try corrupting characters and have a more cerebral bad guy to be the antagonist.

First off, you need to start using the things that stir up primal dreads that are common to just about anyone, and of course darkness is one of them. But again in game there are numerous ways to get around that one. It is seen as more of a tactical issue than one of fear. It helps if you've ever worked with players that have been out in the woods on a moonless night to see just how dark and scary that is to a species like ours that was more prey than predator for most of our existence. Darkness isn't just about not being able to see, it's about knowing that you can't see and somewhere out there is something that might be higher on the food chain, it knows about you, and if you run into it it's probably game over. It also helps if you actually pay at night and limit the amount of light at the table. That may be a bit trite, but its true. It's REALLY hard to get even solid RPer's freaked out about their characters being in the dark when you're playing on a sunny afternoon.

Other fears are being buried allive, or trapped underground. Under water is another one. Most people seem to not realize that after a few hundred feet your not in Princess Ariel's sunny underwater grottos of coral and lovely or that of any Disney movie, but a place of darkness and cold that is quite alien to us. Even in the real world most of the creatures that live down there are quite alien and scary looking. It is not the land of noble merfolk and sea elves(well, not entirely), but of Kuo-Toa, Aboleths, blind serpents with mouths of needle teeth, and of course, Krakens There is a reason HP Lovecraft's stories spend a lot of time with things that are under the earth or in the deep sea. If you really want to double it up, underdark AND underwater. Don't give them maps, don't give them points of references, and keep the fact they even know what they are fighting to a minimum. Fear of the unknown is the best tool you'll have to keep your players freaked out. I once had a large room that had a bottomless pit, only way across was to swing on some chains. There were Babau in the darkness but they didn't know that, just that some large things were swinging on the outskirts with red eyes once they had started across.

It's also a two way street, the players are going to have to get into it with you. When I did once run a pretty successful horror themed Halloween session on time, I got a lot of good scares and tension among the PC's, and consider that one of my best nights as a DM. That being said, the thing that terrified them the most, a Rust Monster. Nothing, and I mean nothing terrifies players like thinking they are about to have some of their best gear destroyed. Probably not the species of horror you were asking about in your thread, but still as far as DND PC's go, a very primal one common to them all